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WorldWeird: [Closed] NEWSTRANGE -- the Informus Thread (Closes 12th August)
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CommentAuthorGreasemonkey
- CommentTimeAug 14th 2012 edited
Does anyone remember Lion Magazine? I had a bunch of their old hardcover annuals from the 50's, and now I'm kicking myself for losing track of them.
Their cover gallery is here. Take a look, seriously. -
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That's quite a range of covers. Some look like they were the inspiration for Japanese tin toys . . . robots and rockets and the like.
The magazine lasted a surprisingly long time. -
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CommentAuthorGreasemonkey
- CommentTimeAug 14th 2012
The interior art wasn't much, but those painted covers were amazing. -
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Were these comic collections? Short stories with illustrations?
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Beck 'Produces' A Genius Innovation That Appeals To The User-Generated Generation
Sheet music. Nothing but sheet music.
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CommentAuthorPurple Wyrm
- CommentTimeAug 14th 2012
@stefanJ - Were these comic collections? Short stories with illustrations?
Both. In the utopian UK of the 1950s to 1970s there were weekly magazines full of comics and illustrated short stories for kids, and at the end of each year (conveniently around Christmas time) they'd release hardback bound collections of the best material from the year with a bit of extra content thrown in. As a kid in 1980s Australia I inherited a whole bunch of them from my dad and as a result had a rather anachronistic view of the world. -
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CommentAuthorVornaskotti
- CommentTimeAug 15th 2012
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CommentAuthorFinagle
- CommentTimeAug 15th 2012
Aw, shit. I'm sad he never got to see and get rich off of a decent movie treatment of the Stainless Steel Rat. -
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- CommentAuthorWood
- CommentTimeAug 15th 2012
Ohio AG Releases Disturbing Human Trafficking ReportThe Ohio Attorney General’s office today released a report on human trafficking in Ohio which found that out of 328 self-identified human trafficking victims, more than one-third were trafficked while they were minors.
In all of Ohio, the most common buyers for victims were law enforcement. Businessmen and drug dealers were second and third, respectively.
When contacted by CityBeat, the Ohio Attorney General’s office said they have no suggestions to specifically deal with law enforcement officials, which topped the list of buyers, who are involved in human trafficking.
"Hi guys, our police is raping kids, but we're not really going to do anything about it, lol" -
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CommentAuthorcelan
- CommentTimeAug 15th 2012 edited
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CommentAuthoroldhat
- CommentTimeAug 15th 2012
So, in Toronto our Mayor is a fun/horrible topic. Recently he was caught reading while driving on an expressway. Here's what he said when he was confronted with it:
Reporter: “Sir, there’s a picture that went out on Twitter this morning of you reading while still driving on the Gardiner [Expressway].”
Ford: “Yeah, probably. I’m busy.”
Reporter: “So you read while driving?”
Ford: “Yeah, probably, yeah. I’m try[ing] to catch up on my work and you know I keep my eyes on the road, but I’m a busy man.”
Reporter: “You don’t see a problem doing that on the Gardiner?”
Ford: “Well, I’m busy. I got to be — I don’t know what that has to do with a trade mission, but anyways. Ridiculous questions sometimes, seriously.”
This led to the Toronto Police making a public plea for the mayor to get a driver and a few fun jokes.
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- CommentAuthorWood
- CommentTimeAug 15th 2012
Scientists reverse engineer animal brains to create bionic prosthetic eyesUtilizing neuroscience, gene therapy, and optogenetics, a pair of researchers from Cornell University have created a bionic prosthetic eye that can restore almost-normal vision to animals blinded by destroyed retinas.
First, gene therapy is used to deliver special proteins to the patient’s damaged retina (i.e. caused by degenerative diseases, such as macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy). By using optogenetics, these proteins have been modified so that they’re sensitive to light — they’re not quite rods and cones, but they’re along the same lines.
The next step is the clever/unique bit. For years now, Nirenberg has been working on decoding the signals sent by the retina to the brain. A year ago, she cracked this code. At the time, she had only cracked the code used by the mouse retina, but now she’s cracked the monkey code too — and a monkey’s retina is very similar to ours.
That’s not the breakthrough here, though: Nirenberg and Pandarinath have now taken the mouse retina code and developed a working prosthetic, completely restoring a mouse’s vision.
The prosthetic contains a camera pointed forward, a Texas Instruments OMAP 3530 SoC (system-on-a-chip), and a tiny DLP pico projector. The SoC converts the camera’s output into encoded data that the mouse’s brain can understand, and then the projector is used to beam that data to the optogenetic proteins that were earlier placed in the retina using gene therapy. The optogenetic proteins then transmit the encoded signal to the brain, via the ganglion cells and optic nerve. Voila: restored (grayscale) vision. -
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CommentAuthordorkmuffin
- CommentTimeAug 15th 2012
SHE'LL LOOK THE SAME EXCEPT FOR BIONIC EYES.
(She lost the real one in the robot wars) -
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- CommentAuthorRenThing
- CommentTimeAug 15th 2012
@Dorkmuffin
Jonathan Coulton is awesome. I know because he gave me diahrrea on his nerd cruise (or, at least, he implied it when he shook my hand and said, "There, now you have the diahrrea.") -
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CommentAuthorGreasemonkey
- CommentTimeAug 15th 2012
@StefanJ: Yeah, they were collections of prose and comics. War stories, spy thrillers, historical adventures etc - the standard fare of boys' magazines. Some of the writing was pretty decent, but as Purple Wyrn mentioned, a lot of the material was kind of old-fashioned in its attitudes. -
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CommentAuthorGreasemonkey
- CommentTimeAug 15th 2012 edited
Okay, one more and then I'll quit hijacking the thread.
Commando war comics! Just a small-format black and white booklet, but the editors consistently hired excellent artists and writers. Check out the nice clean inking:
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- CommentAuthorKosmopolit
- CommentTimeAug 15th 2012
A bizarre footnote to the war in Syria:
The Free Syrian Army kidnapped 11 Lebanese citizens they accused of being Hezbollah members in Syria to fight for the Assad government. One of the kidnapped men was a member of the Meqdad family.
The fallout;
Al-Meqdad family announced on Wednesday that its military wing has so far kidnapped more than 20 Free Syrian Army members in Lebanon, as well as a Turkish national, promising a “hefty catch.”
The military wing told LBCI television: “We may take escalatory measures depending on the latest developments.”
“We have a bank of targets in Lebanon and we are capable of reaching regional targets,” it warned.
“We can reach Aley, Tripoli, and Iqlim al-Kharroub,” said an unidentified masked gunman who was surrounded by a number of other gunmen of the Meqdad military wing.
Media report had earlier announced that the wing had abducted a Turkish national of the Soufan family.
Voice of Lebanon radio said that Turkish national is a diplomat called Soufan.
LBCI later broadcast images of the passport of the Turkish national who was kidnapped by the Meqdad family, identifying him as Aydin Tufan.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry demanded that the Lebanese government provide information on its abducted national, reported al-Jadeed television.
On the abduction of Syrian FSA members, Abu Ali al-Meqdad said on behalf of the family: “The family’s military wing kidnapped several Syrians. We are not afraid of anyone.”
That's right, the Meqdad family (which I suspect is a lousy translation of a word that's closer in meaning to "clan" or "tribe") has its own military wing. -
- CommentAuthorKosmopolit
- CommentTimeAug 15th 2012
Greasemonkey, don't forget Starblazer which I believe published some of Grant Morrison's first professional work.
